No sex please — the new trend in online dating that specialises in platonic connections

Atalanta Harmsworth, an actress in her late 40s, founded creativesdating.com

When Suzanne Hartington, an attractive divorcee in her early 50s, placed her advert on an internet dating site, she knew exactly what she was looking for: someone roughly the same age to share her love of cooking and country walks.

There are thousands of similar requests out there, jostling for space in online forums and lonely-hearts columns.

But Suzanne, a paralegal from Devon, chose this particular dating site because she knew its male subscribers would meet her one essential dating criteria — that they, too, wanted a meaningful relationship forged on an entirely platonic basis.

Difficult though it is to believe, in our seemingly sex-obsessed era, Suzanne is far from alone.

In fact, in recent years a growing number of dating sites have sprung up aimed at bringing together both men and women looking for an affectionate, cerebral connection with a member of the opposite gender — without a sexual element.

Suzanne’s preferred site, platonic partners.co.uk, promotes entirely celibate relationships, while another, nosexdating.co.uk, was set up for those who cannot have sexual relationships, whether for physical or psychological reasons.

Meanwhile, creativesdating.com is, as its name suggests, a forum for creative types to meet kindred spirits, with romance a happy bonus.

Platonic Partners was set up eight years ago by Suzie King, a counsellor from Cambridge who is now 59, after she realised there was no forum for people like her who craved companionship and affection, yet had lost interest in the sexual side of life.

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‘I’d been married and had great sexual relationships, but I got to the stage when other things became more important,’ she recalls.

‘It was a very natural process — it wasn’t a conscious, ‘‘Oh, I’m not going to have sex again.’’ It just happened.

'I realised there was a huge need for people to be able to find like-minded people,' said Atalanta

‘I moved house, came out of a relationship, changed career to become a psychotherapist and, when several years had gone by, I realised I was content without it.

'But there was nothing out there for me or others who felt the same — so I created something myself.’

Now Platonic Partners has nearly 6,000 members, from 18 to 80, all united in their wish to take sex off the dating agenda.

‘Once word got out, I was contacted by a lot of people who were grateful to be able to date without the expectation of sex,’ says Suzie.

‘The most consistent feedback has always been that sex can get in the way. We associate sex with intimacy, but that’s often far from the truth. Take it away and people learn to communicate properly, to really connect.’

Including — perhaps surprisingly — many men, such as Michael, 48, from Hampshire, an operations director for an international transportation company.

Charming, good-looking and robustly heterosexual, he has nonetheless been celibate for 20 years and says joining the site was liberating.

‘I’d always been awkward around women and at the bedroom stage I froze. I had no sexual confidence. I had endless therapy, but it made no difference.

'Ultimately I’m not very driven by sex, but men who aren’t interested in sex are almost the last taboo. Pretending to be commitment-phobic was the only face I could present to the world.’

That is, until he stumbled upon Suzie’s site.

‘I felt a huge sense of relief that there was a way of meeting women where sex was a non-factor,’ he recalls.

Indeed, through the site he has met a 41-year-old divorcee who shares his feelings.

‘Like me, she has little sex drive,’ he says. ‘Our relationship is enormously affectionate — we share the same bed, but we don’t have full physical contact and are happy with that.’

It is exactly the sort of relationship Suzanne Hartington is seeking. With two children now grown-up, she describes herself as ‘asexual’.

‘I had a normal sex life for years, but as I’ve got older I’ve just been less and less interested,’ she says.

Creativesdating.com is a safe and friendly environment for busy creatives to make new friends, says its founder Atalanta Harmsworth

‘After my divorce five years ago, I had a couple of short relationships, but the sex was just something I did because I was expected to, not because I wanted to.

'If I had to write a list of a hundred things I want to do with my day, sex wouldn’t be on it — but it’s difficult to admit that in our society.

‘You feel like an oddball if you say it’s not massively important. But the reality is I just want to meet someone I can potter around with, someone who shares my values.’

That sentiment is shared by Atalanta Harmsworth, an actress in her late 40s, who founded creativesdating.com after struggling to meet men she connected with through traditional sites.

‘I found there weren’t any dating sites strictly for professional creatives, and so I started my own,’ she says.

Atalanta, who lives in a pretty Sussex village with her 16-year-old son Alfred, initially intended the site to be a traditional matchmaking forum — but was pleasantly surprised to see it evolve into a platonic meeting place as well.

‘I got emails from people saying they had made wonderful new friends,’ she says.

‘I realised there was a huge need for people to be able to find like-minded people, for friendship as well as romance.

‘Working life has changed. Many creative people, even designers and artists, often spend all day sitting in front of computers, which can be rather lonely. Our site is a safe and friendly environment for busy creatives to make new friends.’

Deal breakers

Among her members is Sally, a 33-year-old digital media specialist from Bristol, who uses the site as a shortcut to creating a fulfilling social life.

‘I wanted to widen my circle of friends, but my work takes so much time and energy that I don’t have excess time to socialise,’ she says.

‘I joined the site on a platonic basis and have found that the people I am getting to know understand me better than even some of my oldest friends.’

Clinical psychologist Sally Austen says the strength of these sites is their integrity.

‘There is an honesty which is often absent from traditional dating,’ she says. ‘The world, and our roles in it, have changed but we all still want to meet people with whom we have a connection, whether friendly or romantic.’

Atalanta Harmsworth has certainly found this to be the case.

‘Ultimately, I’d like to connect professional creatives all over the world, whatever it is they’re looking for,’ she says.

‘We had a call recently from an L.A. producer who is in pre-production for a television project to be shot in London next spring.

‘He feels UK talent is very strong in all areas of the entertainment business, and has asked that I find a way of letting the U.S. site interact with the UK site.

'He prefers working with people he knows, and he’d like to do that on Creatives Dating — so we are in the process of implementing that platonic facility across all our sites.’

Suzie King, meanwhile, is enjoying a happy platonic partnership of a year’s standing with a 62-year-old former accountant which, she says, is every bit as fulfilling as her previous, more traditional, relationships.

‘We actually met through friends, but when I talked about my site he totally understood my way of thinking,’ she says.

‘We got together because we found friendship and communication were more important than an initial lustful connection that so often goes wrong. We by-passed the sex stage and ended up in a wonderful partnership.

'The richness and depth of the relationship is enough. We joke about the fact that we’re like old married people — we just skipped a stage.’

Suzie acknowledges that many people just can’t imagine a celibate partnership.

‘It’s still a source of ridicule,’ she admits. ‘I’ve had conversations where people say: “Who on earth wouldn’t want sex?” But a surprising number of people don’t, and we’re very happy.’

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Online dating: platonicpartners.co.uk and creativesdating.com lead new trend for platonic connections